John Kenneth Galbraith died yesterday, at the age of 97. I saw him once, during my law school sojourn in Cambridge, walking across Harvard Yard. There was no doubt; the six foot eight inch frame and angular face were unmistakeable. I read only one book of his cover-to-cover. It wasn't his best-selling critique of post-World War 2 American capitalism, The Affluent Society. Nor was I one of the fifty or so people (in his estimation, according to his obituary in today's New York Times) who read his one book-length attempt (successful, again in his estimation, as well as that of the Times writers) at technical economic analysis, A Theory of Price Control.

The book I did read was The Scotch, a memoir of his coming of age among the farmers of Southern Ontario, of whom his parents were exemplary. I suspect this little book is typical of Galbraith's ostensibly non-economic writings (he has also written three novels and was co-author of a study of Indian art) in that it is laden with implications concerning what used to be called (and what Galbraith might most accurately be described as having taught and written about) "political economy". The one that sticks with me from The Scotch is that a requisite of a liberal political and economic dispensation - using "liberal" in the contemporary American sense of "generous" as well as in the classic European sense of "characterized by individual liberty" - is the ascendancy of people of "substance". By "substance" he didn't mean wealth (though the Calvinist beliefs of these descendants of Scottish Presbyterian emigrants made them see worldly success as indicative of divine grace), but personal integrity.

The Scotch included an anecdote Galbraith told on himself that was illustrative of the local character. He was, he recalled, sitting on a rail fence beside his family's cow pasture. Next to him was "a compact, honey-haired girl" on whom he had a high school crush. As they watched, OAC Pride, a prize bull his father had bought from the Ontario Agricultural College, gave his attention to one of the cows. "I'd like to try that sometime," said young Ken wistfully. "Well," the girl answered," it's your cow."

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About Me

I narrowly missed being that rara avis for my generation, a native Floridian, when the U.S. Army closed its hospital in Tallahassee, shortly before my mother’s due date. She went home, and I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor: Altoona, Pennsylvania. In that chilly March of 1946, the first sound to reach my infant ears from outside the hospital walls was likely the shriek of a steam locomotive’s whistle. This could explain my lifelong love of trains. Four surface crossings of the Atlantic in childhood also led to fascination with ships and the sea.

My father was in the military, so our family (I was an only child) went from place to place often in my early years. I was in England from the ages of five to eight (the first newspaper headline I recall reading is “KING DIES”; the King in question being George VI, father of Elizabeth II) and began my formal education in a rural county council (what we call “public”) school, where I probably escaped having my bottom caned only because the headmistress feared creating an international incident. Other places where I lived while growing up were Miami, San Antonio, Cheyenne, the Florida panhandle and Tampa.

I graduated from the University of South Florida (B.A., 1967) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1970). After that, apart from two years' duty in the U.S. Army, I practiced law in New York City. I worked in law firms and as in-house counsel, and served on the boards of directors of an insurer and a reinsurer. On a volunteer basis I now write for Brooklyn Heights Blog and the Brooklyn Bugle, and also publish my own blog, Self-Absorbed Boomer, which has been described as "relentlessly eclectic." In 1991, I married Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We live in Brooklyn Heights. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, also lives in Brooklyn.